


Will It Work?

by youwilllovemylaugh



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 15:33:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/pseuds/youwilllovemylaugh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode 3x11 insert fic. When Dr. Deaton tells Lydia to go with Stiles, leaving her with Isaac, Allison questions everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will It Work?

_Will it work?_

It is the first question she was taught to ask after hearing instructions. It is her go-to question, her instant reaction. Sometimes, it even comes to her before the other person is finished speaking.

It is no different this time, when Dr. Deaton looks at Lydia and says, “Go with Stiles.”

Immediately, Allison’s head turns to look at Isaac, standing solid and quiet behind her. Even with his brawn and his adolescence as a werewolf, his ability to become invisible has surprised her numerous times since the minute they were asked to stock the utility closet at school.

He looks back down at her, eyes like liquid diamond, twinkling in the dim light of the basement fluorescents, assuring her of her safety in his hands.

_Will it work?_

She looks at Scott, who is staring at the both of them. She can feel Stiles looking around, too, clearly confused, anxiously trying to figure out what’s going to happen next. Scott nods once, but she knows this isn’t over – this isn’t going to be that easy.

As she turns to look back at Isaac, she sees Lydia holding Stiles’s hand – two of her fingers, wrapped around two of his, her thumb rubbing short strokes on his palm. This is what does it. This is what strikes her right in her heart. This is what sends her back.

_Will it work?_

She is eight and wide-eyed. In her hands is a brand-new military-grade crossbow, cold metal and unforgiving rope, and heavy as anything she’s ever held in her hands before. It is her birthday, and this is what she’s asked for, and even though it scares her and she can barely lift it past her hips and everything she’s learned about archery seems foreign when she tries to apply it to this bow, her mother is watching. Her mother is watching, and she needs to get her to love her somehow, and if this is the way she has to do it, then that’s how she’s going to do it. She smiles, and says, “This is the best present ever!” and when her dad wraps her in his strong arms, it’s her mother’s face she watches, over his shoulder. It’s pride she feels in her chest when she watches the corner of her mother’s thin mouth turn up.

She is twelve and awkward. Her aunt comes to visit every year around her father’s birthday, and whenever she’s around, Allison has to talk to her about boys. This year, there hasn’t been anyone even remotely special – not a single one in any of her classes, not a one on her archery team, no one in town on Friday nights. There is no one, and she is fine with that because she likes the freedom, finds comfort in deciding things for herself, and she can’t see wanting to change that. Not when she’s just gotten used to it. But when Aunt Kate first sets her pretty brown eyes on Allison, a lie forms on her tongue. There is a boy in her homeroom, one who sits two rows ahead of her and reads all day long. He wears tight jeans and skater shoes, and his hair falls in his eyes, and he is as dreamy as a twelve-year-old boy can be. By the time Allison hears Aunt Kate sneak into her bedroom after ten-thirty, the lie spills from her lips, peppery and hot as paprika.

She is fifteen and nervous. It’s a new town, a new house, new people. They weren’t running from something, but toward it, according to her father. They weren’t starting over, but merely starting again.

“You’ll be fine,” her dad assures her, kind eyes soft and cornflower blue. “You’re a brilliant young woman, and anyone with some sense in their heads will see that.”

And there are plenty of people who see it – there is Lydia, the gorgeous, brilliant girl who picked her up on day one, and hasn’t let go since; there is Jackson, Lydia’s obnoxious jock of a boyfriend who has smiled at her in ways that say he knows more about her than he lets on. And there is Scott McCall, who seems to spend more of his time staring at her with a half-smile on his pink lips than he does studying – which is exactly the kind of person her father would advise her to forget.

But she can’t. She can’t forget him no matter how hard she tries. There is one way she can get away with seeing Scott and still please her dad – and the more she thinks about it, the more the idea appeals to her – but it isn’t like her to lie. It isn’t until Lydia agrees with her, late one night while they lie awake and swathed in moonlight drifting in from Allison’s bedroom window, that she finally agrees to do it. She will keep Scott a secret – and she will tell herself it is for the best.

Six months ago, she is standing under the steaming hot shower spray, wishing the ache in her chest would evaporate, hoping that one morning, she would wake up and the loss of her mother would be the slightest bit less noticeable, that in the moment she realizes that her mother is gone, she won’t feel like crying until she has shriveled up into a prune of her old self. It is only when she goes to shave her legs that she sees the way out. The way to make it stop, to make it hurt less. She holds the razor in both hands and asks herself, _will it work?_

Two months ago, she is squatting in a dingy gas station bathroom, watching the boy she loves while he dies, a needle in her hands and the voice of her dead mother shouting at her to get over it. Her hands shake and her eyes fill with tears, and even though she grew up in this life and she should be able to do this in one shot, no questions asked – she can’t do it. A nagging suspicion claws at her mind, pulls at the soft spots behind her ears. _Will it work?_

And now, she is here, watching as Scott looks at Deaton as his friends pair up around him, and her heart aches. She should be holding Lydia’s hand, gripping it as tight as she can. She should be staring at Scott, she should be shouting at Deaton that it won’t work, it can’t work. She should be able to clear her head, approach this clinically, emotionlessly, and she should be able to figure out another way.

But she can’t. She doesn’t. Lydia looks at Stiles like she has something to hide, and Scott looks at her with a casualness she almost can’t bear, and she turns her eyes to Isaac, who stares on quietly, watching as her mind runs circles around itself. Scott is already walking toward Deaton, and Stiles is gulping away his anxiety, and she can hear Lydia’s mind whizzing around, processing, calculating, worrying. Isaac, as always, is silent.

She wishes for his calm. She wishes for his solace and his strong arms wrapped tight around her shoulders. There is a moment where she feels tears ignite the backs of her eyes, but she cannot cry. Not now, and not ever. The five of them are standing on the edge of a steep, rocky precipice, overlooking the deepest, darkest abyss any of them have ever seen, and when she stares it in the face, she cannot let her tears dampen the moment.

“It’ll be a kind of darkness around your heart,” Deaton tells them, and she doesn’t believe him. It can’t get any worse than this. Her heart can’t get any darker.

She looks down the row, past Stiles, who bounces on his feet and runs a hand through his hair, and stops at Scott, who has never looked more alone than he does beside Deaton, than he does when he looks back at her.

 _It wouldn’t have worked if we’d cut it any other way_ , she thinks to herself, blinking once, hard, and looking away from Scott’s hurt brown eyes. She hates when he looks like that, like a puppy left out in the cold and the rain, like the best friend you just inexplicably let down. The guilt is immeasurable. It expands to include Stiles, to include Lydia, and Deaton, and Isaac. It includes her father and Stiles’s father, and Scott’s mother, and her own mother, and her aunt, and Jackson, and everyone ever touched by this horrible curse her family brought upon the tiny, sleepy Beacon Hills.

She closes her eyes, and she takes off her shoes, and she feels Isaac steady her with his big, warm hands. She slips off her socks and she stands in her thin black dress, envying Scott’s and Stiles’s pants. The ice bath will be freezing, but Isaac squeezes her shoulder, as if to say, _I did it once. It’ll be okay._

Deaton begins to count. She wants to look at Lydia, to stare at Scott, to smile at Stiles, but it’s all she can do to stare ahead and not let her tears slide down her cheeks. She wants to relieve them of their pains, to rescue Lydia from killing Stiles, to keep Scott from dying. She wants to bring Stiles’s father back for him, and Scott’s mother, and her own dad, because she knows as well as they do that the pain of losing one parent is more than one person can handle.

None of them should lose their second. Their only.

Deaton reaches the end of his count, and her body reacts as if on autopilot. She lurches forward and dips her toes into the freezing water, even though she knows it’s better to just throw herself in the tub. She eases in, and she lets the cold consume her bit by bit, knowing that with each inch she soaks in the frigid water she is closer to saving her father.

As the cold sets in, she looks down the line again. Stiles is shivering. Scott’s eyes glow. Between the cold and the emotional distress, her will begins to weaken. Tears don’t fall. Instead, she feels a warm finger cut a hot path inside her chest. It opens a place inside her, dark and hot and sticky, and out of it comes a realization.

The longer she soaks in the ice water, the closer she’ll get to seeing her dad. The closer Stiles will be to hugging his. The closer Scott will be to kissing Melissa’s forehead. And even if it means dying, it will be worth it.

No. She doesn’t have to dread anyone dying. She doesn’t have to hold on so tightly. They’ll live. They’ll all fight, they’ll all come back kicking and screaming, demanding to be with their parents, raring to take down everything that strays in their path.

She hopes they will.


End file.
